Sunday, October 28, 2012

Alessia's Language, Olivia's Sleeping, and Food

Alessia will be two soon. Her language skills amaze me. This morning with a little prompting from Adam she recited Where The Wild Things Are. She corrects me when I recite nursery rhymes and make a mistake. She loves learning Italian. Sometimes when I am speaking in English she says to me "No. Italiano." She's still trying to figure out what Olivia's arrival means. Is she no longer the baby? How should she interact with Olivia? She's definitely testing boundaries, and occasionally does naughty things just to get my attention or to get me to tell her not to in Italian (unravel the psychology on that one). She's super cute and increasingly creative in her play.

Olivia is utterly adorable. She smiles and coos. She has discovered her toes, and stares at the trees when it's breezy. Yesterday she giggled when I was getting her ready for bed. It made me so happy. Alessia took forever to giggle. At the same time she is an awful sleeper. She doesn't nap well, and I don't think I have had four hours straight of sleep in a month. I'm really not sure how much longer I can handle the night waking. We've tried offering a bottle so that Adam can help at night, and she was not impressed with our offer. Adam actually said to me today "you're losing your happiness." So I need to figure that out.

And now food, one of my favorite subjects. Last week was the last for our CSA share. I'm sad to see the end of the season, but it can be a lot of work, and it was a bit much this summer with the two babies. I have a freezer full of tomatoes, peppers, green beans, butternut squash, and a few other odds and ends, and I will enjoy cooking them over the next few months. My current culinary project is green tomatoes. We stripped the plants last weekend. Last summer I made chow chow, but we really don't eat that much relish, and I didn't have time to can this year. So I went looking for recipes. I found all the standard fried green tomato recipes, but I don't have time to stand at a frying pan. So I tried recipes in Italian. Given enough time in a pan with oil and garlic, what litte sugar there is in green tomatoes will caramelize, becoming an amazing little sauce for pasta. What a great discovery!

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

“Sewing (and more) Without Zippers" was started as a sewing blog reflecting my interest in pre-zipper style and sewing techniques. It has since been expanded to include all of my domestic pursuits, many of which also trace their origins to the pre-zipper world.